Maple Avenue Middle School kids promote peace and safety in a digital world

Maple Avenue Middle School students form a living peace sign Friday afternoon.
(ERICA MILLER/emiller@saratogian.com)

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- There are so many ways to get into trouble online, but one important way to keep safe: Think first.

This is the message students learn through programs, speakers and a living peace symbol, which 500 Maple Avenue Middle School eighth-graders made during ninth period Friday.

"We are forming a giant peace symbol to represent our school and to stop bullying and inappropriate cyber behaviors," said Shelly Cromwell, the eighth-grade computer exploration teacher who spearheaded the school's activities. "We want to spread peace and be peaceful citizens."

To that end, Cromwell put together a cyber-safety PowerPoint presentation that her classes watched Friday. Grouped at tables in the library, the 12- and 13-year-old students took in information about digital footprints, child pornography, sextortion, geotags and identity theft.

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Cromwell used YouTube videos of current local events to demonstrate the circumstances of bullying and sexting. One video, taken in October in Gloversville, showed two teenage girls attacking a woman while a third girl filmed the entire incident. Later, the video surfaced online and the teenagers were identified. The victim did not press charges, out of fear of reprisal, but the incident marked the girls as bullies or worse.

Similarly, in 2008, then-20-year-old Joshua Lipton met his fate through a Facebook photo. Cromwell gave the students a handout with an Associated Press article about the case. Charged with drunken driving in an incident that seriously injured a woman, Lipton went to a Halloween party two weeks later dressed as a prisoner. When a picture of the "prisoner" appeared online, the prosecutor handling the case seized upon the photo as evidence that Lipton was an unrepentant partier. Eventually, Lipton was sentenced to two years in prison.

The students appreciated having YouTube video and the PowerPoint slides to watch, instead of simply a traditional lecture.

"Mrs. Cromwell did an excellent job of putting the program together," eighth-grader Nicholas DeSessa said.

"It's different from the character-education programs we've had before," DeSessa's peer, Erin Susko, said. "It's been more conversational and relates to more of our own lives."

Sexual texting, or sexting, has been especially problematic among teenagers, who often don't perceive the consequences of their actions. They may use their smartphones to take or send inappropriate pictures, passing the photos on to people they generally trust, like boyfriends or girlfriends.

In the wrong hands, however, sexually explicit material can end up on the Internet, and no one can ever erase that move or get the pictures back. An educational YouTube video showed what happened to a teenage girl whose photos got online. Everyone everywhere knew who she was and what color underwear she had on.

Cromwell stressed that anyone distributing sexual pictures of a child younger than 18 years of age can be charged with child pornography, even if the sender is the subject of the pictures, and even if the recipient is her boyfriend.

"You can't be overeducated about the dangers of sexting," student Alex Manios said.

Principal Stuart Byrne, who attended Cromwell's last session, described the results of a child-pornography conviction. Convicted people would be felons and registered on the sex offender list. They would be unable to live near schools or churches and unable to vote. Any sex offender's employer would know about the list.

"At 12, 13, you're not looking at this," he told the students. "You aren't thinking that an inappropriate Facebook photo might keep you from being accepted by a college, for example."

Eighth-graders Bryar Older and Tim Van Dusen were glad to learn more about the consequences of poor decisions.

"I don't want to jinx anything," said the principal, smiling, "but we have noticed better behavior throughout the school since the character-education programs began. The kids are responsive."